Apple ships new Final Cut Studio with advanced codec support

Most of Apple's professional video applications received major updates today, in the form of Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server. Final Cut Studio, which already has 50 percent of the NLE market, also got $300 less expensive.

Honestly, is that really any surprise? Ogg Theora is based on old codecs that are no longer used in commercial applications. While its open nature is appealing to a lot of people, I wouldn't classify it as an "advanced" codec.

A .5 update to Compressor and Color? No update for DVD Studio Pro? No wonder they cut $300 off. Motion and Soundtrack Pro are still WAY behind the competition in both features and available talent in the marketplace. Apple had one great app - Final Cut Pro - that changed the marketplace. Final Cut Studio has become Frankenstein's monster, with apps bought from other companies bolted on to Final Cut Pro without any consideration for more popular apps in the industry. It's gone from revolutionary to pro-sumer.

Does the new Color include any changes to the Geometry room and vignetting? The top feature I need is the ability to combine multiple vignettes together for complex matting. For example, to matte around the sky in a day-for-night shot or a wall to add additional shading (vignette #1), while subtracting an actor's head from the matte (vignette #2) as it moves across the frame.

Apple has said that they don't trust the patent situation around Ogg Theora, and worry that it may violate patents that its designers haven't successfully cleared (and Apple has a long history with patent trolls). They were talking about its use in HTML5, but I assume their fears would affect their pro video apps as well.

If someone comes up with an Ogg export plugin for QuickTime, you'll be able to use it from Compressor and Final Cut Pro as well.

And Shake doesn't even get a mention. Apple once thought it was going to really attack the compositing market, so they bought up a couple of compositing apps. They killed one, and kept Shake barely alive for a few years. They really disappointed a lot of people by killing two significant apps in that market.

Given that Apple clearly sees Shake as being of no real value, (Despite the fact that it was probably the most significant compositing app in its class at one point), I wish they would just open source it and let the community work on it.

Originally posted by wrosecrans:And Shake doesn't even get a mention. Apple once thought it was going to really attack the compositing market, so they bought up a couple of compositing apps. They killed one, and kept Shake barely alive for a few years. They really disappointed a lot of people by killing two significant apps in that market.

Given that Apple clearly sees Shake as being of no real value, (Despite the fact that it was probably the most significant compositing app in its class at one point), I wish they would just open source it and let the community work on it.

There have been rumors that a big update to Shake is also in the works... it may be a matter of waiting for Snow Leopard-dependent features to finish, or that the rest of the suite demanded resources that prevented from being released in sync.

However, I do agree that if Apple is uninterested in updating it, it should other sell it to an interested developer or release it to the open source community.

There is no Shake update. And there is nothing in the works to replace it, or compete in that market space.

There are only so many programmers who can work on the specialized code required for such apps. And most of the people who were qualified to do so have left apple and moved onto other projects such as Nuke.

The Pro Apps group at Apple are doing some amazing work given how anemic the team is.

The main problem is that there's very little profit in Pro Apps. It's a relatively small market which demands a lot.

Apple management should remember many of us Final Cut users are the same ones who buy their very expensive Mac Pro towers.

I don't know about the US, but the Academic version of Final Cut Studio has gone up to $1100 CDN. It used to be around $800 for Studio 2. None of my students can afford such an increase, especially since the full retail version is $100 more. I called Apple to enquire about it, and they said the price is right and justified the higher price because there are so many improvements. When I mentioned that the price went down for the retail version, and that it's a main selling point, the sales rep kept repeating the same line about new features. Way to push future users to piracy Apple. As an educator, filmmaker and stock holder in Apple, I'm not pleased.